As someone who comes from hill people, I have always had a fondness for other hill tribes around the world [1], yet this fondness is not undiminished by concern about their ability to ensure their own well-being. I support, to give but one example, the freedom of the Kurds from the troubles they have known in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, their homeland divided up and marginalized, the wealth exploited by larger empires who have not granted any sort of self-determination to the hill peoples on whose land rests the oil and the water that could lead to a prosperous state if it had the virtue and the political will to be a strong and united people.

Given that Kurdistan is one of the few areas in the world where one can find large quantities of oil and water, why is it so desperately poor, and indeed, so largely unknown apart from those of us who take a keen interest in the more obscure parts of the Middle East. Kurdistan has not always been the place where empires went to die [2], even though it has for several thousand years been a place of fierce conflict. For example, the Kurdish Ayubbid dynasty once ruled over much of the Middle East, giving the Islamic Middle East one of its great military heroes, Saladin. Yes, the late 11th century was a long time ago, but at least Kurdistan has some honor in its history, some sort of heroes to draw encouragement from, some noble history that can provide a reminder that things were not always difficult.

This reminder is all the more important given the fact that Kurdistan is seeking mightily [2] to enjoy an oil boom based on trade with Turkey, providing Iraqi Kurdistan with a great deal of oil wealth and providing Turkey with enough oil to provide it with some leverage against Russia, which is currently its main supplier. A Kurdistan that is focused on gaining wealth is a Kurdistan that is not causing troubles with its neighbors, and that can focus a little bit on its own development rather than its own grievances against the nations who have ruled it over the course of its recent tumultuous history, where the dividing line of the Turkish Republic, Iran, and the French and British Middle East empires cut through its tormented land.

Yet that torment cannot only be blamed on foreign nations. After all, it is the divided nature of the Kurdish people and their leadership themselves that invites the intervention of foreign powers. When some Kurdish factions ally with Turkey and others ally with Iran, any hope of achieving a strength of their own is dissipated in anarchical internecine conflict. Certainly the Kurds do not have a great deal of history in working out peaceful relations among their various clans and population groups, but if the Kurds wish to be a mighty and well-respected people, it will be necessary for them to see each other as neighbors and brethren, and not deadly rivals who are fought more harshly than even the various imperialistic people who seek to dominate their mountainous homeland.

It is not the presence or absence of natural resources that makes a nation rich. The contemporary world is full of nations with modest natural resources that have a great deal of wealth. Even those areas with strategic locations differ widely. The little city of Singapore, for all of its concerns about freedom that exist there, is certainly a city that is wealthy and far better off than its neighbors. Crossing the Strait of Singapore leads one to the area of Bunda Aceh, an area that is one of the most undeveloped areas of Indonesia, an area with the same geographic advantages, but a vastly more troubled cultural and political history. Kurdistan has a great deal of natural resources, but without the infrastructure of trust and civic virtue and unity and community spirit, its wealth will only lead to conflict and oppression and disaster.

The real question is whether Kurdistan will do the work that is necessary to build itself morally, and not merely economically. It has resources that others want, and an oil pipeline to Turkey that is about to open and give it some independent wealth from the Iraqi government. Unless it develops some sort of internal cohesion in the absence of a crisis, some sort of ability to trust and use wealth and blessings to build up community rather than to use corruptly to build up a clique, then the wealth that Kurdistan seeks will only be illusory mirage, bringing disappointment and distress in its wake rather than the wealth and development it now promises. Let us see if Kurdistan is up to the task or it will follow a long train of areas whose natural wealth could not buy them political virtue.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/from-one-hill-tribe-to-another/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/an-unexpected-guest/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/free-burma-rangers/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/a-personal-introduction-to-the-students-at-legacy/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/new-country-watch-list/

[2] http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/letter-kurdistan?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20131210&utm_term=Gweekly&utm_content=readmore